


No Place to Be (And Miles to Go)

by elysiumwaits



Category: Longmire (TV)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Future Fic, Growing Old Together, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Insecurity, Non-Linear Narrative, Vic loves the f-word and so do I, glossing over injuries because it's pretty obvious I'm not a doctor, gratuitous western references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2019-12-16
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:34:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21817477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elysiumwaits/pseuds/elysiumwaits
Summary: Five years after Walt retires, Vic's still searching for her place in Wyoming and Walt's still getting into trouble.
Relationships: Walt Longmire/Victoria "Vic" Moretti
Comments: 8
Kudos: 52
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	No Place to Be (And Miles to Go)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tree](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tree/gifts).



> So I threw around a couple of different ideas for this, and what finally stuck was just an exploration of overcoming the miles of baggage that can separate two people, with a dash of aging not-necessarily-gracefully and a healthy amount of Vic-character-study. With an extra side of “It takes a village to keep Walt alive.” Plus hurt/comfort with hospital vigils. 
> 
> Ages are wonky here - not really established in the show, so I’ve got Vic older than Cady, and I hope that’s okay.
> 
> Please forgive me if the characterization lends more to the novels than the show - I think the show characterization was spot-on, except for Vic’s profound love for the word “fuck.” I share this love, and it shows. I also may accidentally refer to something that’s book-verse - it runs together a little in my head, I apologize!
> 
> Title from “Hello Sunshine” by Bruce Springsteen.

“ _ No woman ever loved a man more than I loved Matt Dillon _ .” - Kitty Russell,  _ Gunsmoke: Return to Dodge _

  
  


_ Seven _

Walt never looks as old as he actually is until he’s lying in a hospital bed.

For one thing, it’s usually pretty fucking hard to  _ keep _ Walt in a hospital bed. She’s threatened to sit on him before for a routine, run-of-the-mill test, and that was when he would get to leave in six hours at the most. The sky is blue, there are only two escalators in the entire state of Wyoming, and Walt Longmire is a fucking terrible patient.

If he were awake, he would say something about pots and kettles. Vic’s not exactly a model patient either, but at least she goes to the hospital instead of going full Clint fucking Eastwood and just pouring alcohol over her wounds like some people she could mention.

But Walt isn’t awake. 

He’s not exactly asleep either. Sure, he’s snoring occasionally, when the cannula slips a little, but Vic can’t call it sleep, not when it’s artificially induced by pain medication, antibiotics, and the good old-fashioned near-coma state that the human body slips into when it’s pushed beyond what it should be capable of and has to heal. It’s unconsciousness, she thinks, a long block of it broken by periods of not-quite-lucidity and fever.

It was unsettling the first day, when he wasn’t really lucid after the surgery and dropped off to unconsciousness quickly, when all Vic really wanted was for him to open his eyes and ask about his hat. It was a little novel for all of an hour or so, being able to watch him without him waking up thanks to that weird sixth sense he just seems to have. Three days of intermittent fever have sent that unsettling feeling careening into terrifying, alternating with helplessness and anger until it’s all just knotted up in her stomach.

Now Vic is just… worried. Fidgeting, chewing on her nails. She’s already absent-mindedly picked off the four or five layers of cheap polish - base coat, red polish, top coat, all in little tiny chips on the stark white hospital blanket stolen from the warmer in the hall and the vinyl floor underneath the stupid, uncomfortable recliner she’s been camping in. 

It’s the end of the fourth day since they found him, three and a half days after the emergency surgery, three days after the infection set in, and Walt’s fever has finally broken, at least. Four days of sitting and waiting, picking at her nails, sleeping in the hospital recliner, and only leaving the room to get a cafeteria tray or a drink from the machine down the hall.

Vic has a laptop and a bunch of DVDs that Ferg’s brought her, and they’re all fucking westerns, because of course they are. “You need a new hat,” she tells Walt as the first part of  _ Lonesome Dove _ plays. Robert Duvall is saying goodbye to his pigs. “This is gonna be five hours of my life I won’t be able to get back, but at least his hat’s impressive. You should get a hat like that.”

If Walt were awake, he’d probably say, “I’ll buy a new hat for my own funeral,” or something equally as at home in one of Ferg’s stupid westerns. 

But Walt isn’t awake. 

So Vic sits and watches  _ Lonesome Dove _ while also sitting and watching Walt. Turns out it’s six and a half hours of her life she won’t get back, not five. Whatever. She’s got time to kill anyway.

_ Two _

Walt’s been missing for eight hours and some change, and Vic’s going to vibrate out of her skin. It’s the caffeine, probably, the 200mg pill she took around two, plus the coffee Ruby or Ferg or Zach has been mindlessly refilling for her whenever Vic lets it go cold.

It’s half after four in the morning, and sunlight is a long way off. Vic’s supposed to be running plates, supposed to be going over the security footage they’ve managed to put together from the florist’s parking lot and the bank across the street.

She makes it to six, finally patches enough of the security tape together to get an idea of a make and model for a van, gets a possible identity for whoever’s driving the van behind Walt’s truck, pings the van as possibly belonging to a promising suspect. Vic sends the information to Cady’s phone, and then sits back in her chair and rubs at her eyes, waits for something else to do.

What she gets back, though, is a text that says, “ _ Get some sleep. _ ”

“What the fuck,” Vic mutters when she reads it, glares and chews on the inside of her bottom lip. “‘Get some sleep.’ What the  _ fuck _ , like I’m just going to be able to lay down and take a nap?”

“There’s the holding cell,” Ruby says from her desk. “You look like hell, a nap’s just what you need. 

“I  _ really _ doubt I can sleep with, like, the eight cups of coffee I’ve had tonight.” Vic glances at the clock. “This morning. What the fuck ever.”

Ruby sometimes reminds Vic of her mother, especially when she gets that look on her face, like she’s trying very hard to be patient in the face of unmitigated obstinance. Which is what would be the title of Vic’s autobiography, or so Walt’s told her a couple of times. Not that he can throw any stones at her glass house, here.

“Vic.”

Ruby sounds like she’s said Vic’s name a couple of times now. Vic shakes herself a little, looks up, and finds that Ruby’s actually closer than she was before, standing by Vic’s desk instead of over by her own. Her expression has gone from praying-for-patience to that  _ other _ look that reminds Vic of her mother, the one that kind of makes Vic want a hug.

“It’s almost seven,” Ruby says, firm but not unkind. “The other deputies will be here soon. You should lay down, Vic. We got the holding cell, there’s a couch in Sheriff Longmire’s office, or you can drive on home.”

Vic motions to the coffee cup that’s still on her desk. “I’m not going to sleep, this coffee is  _ warm _ still.”

Ruby lifts an eyebrow. “I switched you to decaf at four.” 

There’s really no arguing with that, Vic knows, and there’s a voice in her mind that sounds an awful lot like Cady and an awful lot like Walt telling her that she’s not going to be any use if she’s dead on her feet. 

So she nods in reluctant agreement, too tired to argue when she knows Ruby’s right, and lets herself into Cady’s office. The door closes under her hand, heavy as ever, and she sags back against it, now that she’s away from Ruby’s eye and the risk of someone walking in.

Vic’s still shaking. 

The blanket that Walt used to keep in a cabinet is still there, as is the pillow that Cady added after she spent her first night on the couch, too exhausted from working late to drive. Vic pulls them out, grips the pillow tight in one hand and the blanket tight in the other, until her knuckles are white, just so she won’t feel them tremble for the seconds it takes for her to get them onto the couch.

She sleeps. Doesn’t even realize she’s out until she’s blinking awake, Cady standing over her in her Absaroka County Sheriff’s jacket.

“We found Dad’s truck,” Cady says, and her voice is thick. “You should… you should come take a look.”

Vic is shaking, still, exhaustion and adrenaline and caffeine all mixing into a maelstrom of fear in the pit of her stomach. She shakes when she sees the personal pick-up truck that Walt traded the Sheriff’s Bronco for years ago on the side of a lonely road. She doesn’t cry, though.

Not until she sees the blood on the driver’s side and the bouquet of roses in the passenger seat, anyway.

_ Five _

For the record, Walt’s hat is on top of Vic’s bag. Maybe it says something about her that she feels a kinship with the hat. Something poetic about waiting, or whatever bullshit her tired brain can only halfway come up with. Christ, now she’s giving the hat a  _ personality _ .

Walt needs to wake up and take his fucking hat back, because it’s day fucking three and Vic is tired of watching fucking  _ Gunsmoke _ .

She’s not Miss Kitty, damn it. She’s not good at sitting around and waiting for shit to happen. Vic doesn’t wait for things to happen, she makes them happen, she goes for what she wants.

But she can’t  _ make _ Walt wake up.

Sometimes, in the hours where she feels useless and out-of-place, Vic thinks she should pack up and go back to Philadelphia. Sometimes, less often now that he’s retired, Vic feels like she’s the one being left behind in the doorway of a Dodge City saloon, watching one of the last good men of the west ride off to try and make the world a better place. Sometimes, she wonders if this is just going to hurt in the long run, and she feels the echo of loss five years gone.

She’d probably just be sitting in a shitty Philadelphia apartment and worrying about Walt from there, if Vic’s being honest with herself. So she puts in the next  _ Gunsmoke _ disc, and distantly wonders if she could pull off Amanda Blake’s 1958 wardrobe.

Vic can’t make him, but she can make sure that she’s here when he finally does wake up.

_ Three _

When Vic first comes in through the ambulance bay of Durant Regional, the hat’s in Henry’s hands. He’s as still and stoic as ever, but if there’s one thing Vic knows about Walt Longmire (and she knows a lot), it’s that you don’t really have to worry about him until Henry Standing Bear is worried about him. That doesn’t  _ stop _ her from worrying, of course, but the fact that he was sitting in a chair with shitty hospital coffee on the table beside him, looking concerned but not  _ too _ concerned… Vic would be lying if she said it wasn’t a little bit comforting.

Henry tells her what she needs to know, like where in the Wyoming wilderness Henry found him, and which son of a bitch it was that Sheriff Cady Longmire was currently busy hunting down before the trail went cold, at the expense of holding this hospital vigil with them. The highlights of Walt’s condition - dehydration, sunburn, stab wound, surgery. The chill of hours out in the Wyoming winter that didn’t quite dip into hypothermia because Henry found him just in time. It’s an unusually warm December, too, and Vic is suddenly, fiercely grateful for it.

“At least there’s no snakebite.” Vic rubs her eyes, wishing that she was wearing anything but her uniform and running on more than two and a half hours of sleep. “Unless you got bit this time. By the one rattlesnake that doesn’t know it’s December.”

Henry huffs out the ghost of an unhappy laugh. “It would have evened the score. Do not think I did not try.”

“I guess if you kicked over enough rocks you’d run into one. We traded a snakebite for a stab wound and surgery, anyway.” Vic sighs. “Why is it always Walt?”

Henry sticks around until the doctor comes out to tell them that Walt is going to be moved to a room soon, and that the surgery has gone well. Vic sits back down in the plastic waiting room chair, hard, and rests her head back against the wall. She closes her eyes, just for a moment, and lets the complicated wave of relief-fear-exhaustion wash over her. 

“Give me your keys.” 

Vic sighs and opens her eyes. “It’s against regulations to let a civilian drive a department vehicle,” she says, and shifts in the chair to dig them out of her pocket.

“I have been deputized on and off for many years now. Today I am a deputy. Here.” It’s the hat, held out to her by Henry like he’s trading it for her truck keys. 

It’s ridiculous, the way she hesitates. Vic’s held Walt’s hat before and never once hesitated. She’s handed it to him from where it hangs on multiple occasions, even has a couple of pretty great memories of wearing nothing but Walt’s hat and a smile. But it’s strange here, in this quietly intense setting against the backdrop of yet another close call, sitting with the terrible knowledge that someday they may be too old and too slow to survive this shit. 

And maybe it’s because she’s so damn tired, but it’s like...  _ she _ didn’t find Walt, just spun her wheels in the mud and panicked about it. There’s a moment where Vic honestly and truly wonders if she  _ deserves _ to hold onto something that’s so important to Walt for him.

It’s just a fucking  _ hat _ .

She pauses for too long, gives herself away. Henry’s probably already noticed, though, because Henry notices everything. And it’s fucking stupid because _ of course  _ Henry is the one who found him, Henry’s known Walt since they were twelve and can track and knows the Wyoming wilderness better than Vic ever will. 

Vic doesn’t belong in Wyoming, couldn’t find him out there in the chill of the winter wilderness.

“It is not mine to hold onto.” Henry’s voice cuts through the exhausted spiral she’s driven herself into.

Vic takes the hat. “It’s not mine either,” she argues. It’s strangely comforting, the soft texture of the felt-beaver blend on the pads of her fingers. 

The coffee cup, long empty, makes a hollow sound when Henry throws it into the trashcan only a few steps away. “He will want you to hold on to it, Vic. Not me,” he says, and leaves to illegally drive her truck from where it’s illegally parked.

_ Six _

Before  _ Lonesome Dove _ , there’s  _ 3:10 to Yuma _ . There’s actually  _ 3:10 to Yuma _ twice: Vic falls asleep to the original movie sometime during the late night hours of the second day and the early morning hours of the third, and then puts the remake in when she wakes up. 

Somewhere between Russell Crowe and Christian Bale, Dan Evans and Ben Wade, Vic kind of dozes, eyes open at the screen but not necessarily watching. She thinks about duty and honor, about the promises people make and the promises people keep, about legacy and integrity, and time marching on and on. And maybe Philadelphia-Vic would call it bullshit, maybe she would say something about how no one can guarantee they’re going to keep a promise ( _ or a marriage vow _ , a little piece of her heart whispers). 

But there’s not a single instance that Vic can think of where Walt has made a promise to her that he didn’t do his damnedest to keep. There are leftovers in their fridge from a dinner he didn’t make it to and a bouquet of dead roses in the passenger seat of his truck that prove it, too, that the cold killed sometime between Walt being stabbed and this moment, with the gentle morning light creeping into his hospital room.

Good intentions and promises, vows they haven’t made but intend to keep anyway, all of it circles around and around in her head while the credits roll on her laptop screen. 

And if her cheeks are wet, well. Walt’s not awake to worry about it anyway.

_ Four _

Sheriff Cady Longmire is a busy woman these days. 

The department isn’t as small as it used to be, having grown in the five or so years since Walt retired. They’ve had to expand - times are changing, after all. The most glaring example is the shiny new engagement ring on Cady’s finger and the way that Zach has started calling himself “Mr. Longmire.” 

Walt has made exactly one joke about a grandkid, and it was while Vic was on her way out of the room.

Cady finally manages to extract herself from the whole legal aspect of Walt’s abduction and attempted murder about four hours after Walt gets out of surgery, and about an hour and a half after Walt blurrily tells Vic “I love you” and “good night” and some mumbling between before giving into the pain and the medication. Vic doesn’t even notice the time passing after he’s out. 

Just the first of many hours, and she spends it with the thumb of her right hand rubbing over the back of Walt’s left. She’s careful to avoid the IV that’s taped down there, strokes across his knuckles instead, curls her fingers up with his. She has the thought that his hand is rough, but strangely… delicate. She’s never noticed the arthritis that swells some of his knuckles before now, and when she looks at her own, she’s got some too - the pain that aches in the mornings sometimes, or when it rains, or when she’s tired, that she usually just ignores, brushes away from her mind.

“I hate this.”

Vic looks up from where her hand is carefully tangled with Walt’s, and finds Cady in the doorway of the hospital room. Cady isn’t looking back at her, though, instead focused on her father. Vic knows that it looks like he’s asleep, chest rising and falling steadily, catching a little on a snore every now and again, a rhythmic sound and motion that Vic knows better than she knows most things these days.

It’s evening, now, she realizes - the room is dim except for the one light that the nurse had left on when Vic had informed her that she didn’t give one flying fuck about visiting hours. She’s still wearing her uniform, kind of - she’s stripped down to the white tank-top she wears under her uniform shirt, and her duty belt is back at the office where she’d forgotten it in her haste to get to the hospital.

Cady’s in her uniform too, or what passes for it. She doesn’t actually wear the official uniform - instead, she’s got the Absaroka County Sheriff’s jacket on, hands shoved into the pockets, the star pinned to it. She usually puts her hair back into a ponytail to keep it out of her face, and Vic’s just now noticing that it’s not nearly as neat as it usually is.

That’s not all, Vic realizes as Cady sits down in the other uncomfortable recliner on the other side of Walt’s hospital bed. There’s a cut high on her cheek, still shiny, and it looks like she’s covered in dirt and dust. 

“What the hell happened to you?” Vic grabs the tissue box off of the table as she stands and moves over to Cady’s side. The tissue feels like thin cardboard when she pulls it out, but she presses it to the cut on Cady’s cheek anyway, when Cady makes no move to take the box. “You’re still bleeding. For Christ’s sake, we’re in a  _ hospital _ , did no one offer you a fucking Band-Aid?”

“I’m fine,” Cady says, which is a classic Longmire lie if Vic’s ever heard one.

“You’ve got a stick in your hair.”

Cady finally takes the tissues as Vic plucks the stick from the mess of her ponytail and tosses it in the direction of the trash can. “You’re one to talk,” she says, looking away from her father just to look pointedly at Vic. “You’ve slept two hours in two days and you’re still wearing most of your uniform.”

And yeah, okay, she might have a point there. Vic’s not going to admit it, though, Cady’s not old enough to be her mother like Ruby is. “What, did you  _ tackle _ the guy?”

Cady cuts her eyes back to Walt and shuts her mouth, looks like Vic’s just caught her with her hand in the cookie jar or something. 

Vic shakes her head, feels something that might be a smile pull at her mouth. “You’re just like your father. You Longmires are so dramatic.”

She gets a quick, strained smile in return. “You’re not the first to say so.”

Silence, then, between them. It’s unsteady, a quiet broken by the sound of Walt breathing and the hum of various machines, the hiss of oxygen, the distant beeping of other rooms, and the conversations of nurses down the hall that Vic can’t make out from here. She feels awkward, standing next to Cady’s chair, but she can’t make herself go back over to the recliner. 

Vic’s not used to being so off-kilter. Her place in the world is the one she’s carved out, but ever since she called Cady about Walt being late, she’s felt like maybe the space she carved doesn’t fit as well as she thought it did.

Unnecessary, she thinks, like she could just step away and life would go on without her.

She shifts on her feet. “Do you want me to bring you anything?” she finally asks. “Food, I mean, or something to do. You’ve got Zach to dig through your underwear drawer for you, so I’ll leave clothing up to him.”

“What?” Cady looks up at her again. She hasn’t actually used the tissue box, and the one that Vic had wiped her cheek with is still in Vic’s hand. “You’re not staying with him?”

“One of us has to keep the department running,” Vic says. Ferg is great and so is Zach, but they’ve got rookies now, and Vic doesn’t really want to see how much dumbass the Absaroka County Sheriff’s Department can produce without supervision. “We can’t  _ both _ be here.” The look that Cady’s giving her, though, makes her feel like she’s missed a memo.

“Exactly.” Cady sounds confused. “So I sent Ferg to get stuff for  _ you _ .”

There’s a whole lot in that sentence that doesn’t make sense to Vic. She’s tired, can’t figure out which part to tackle first. She finally lands on, “So Ferg’s digging through  _ my _ underwear drawer?”

“He’s actually getting Meg to do it,” Cady replies, and breaks into a yawn. “He thought you would be more comfortable than that.”

In all honesty, Vic doesn’t care about Ferg and her underwear drawer. She’s still reeling, unsteady and so damn tired, and sometimes, she doesn’t understand why she’s here. “But  _ you’re _ Walt’s daughter. You’re his family.”

There’s a long moment as Cady looks at her, and Vic feels like she’s  _ missing something _ , like there’s some big thing that Vic’s supposed to just get here, that everyone else seems to understand and she doesn’t.

“You’re his family too, Vic,” Cady says, voice soft against the hum of the machines and the steady sound of Walt breathing. “We can’t both be here, so  _ you _ should stay here. He’ll want you to be here when he wakes up.”

Vic’s fucking  _ tired _ , and she doesn’t know what she’s missing here. So she just nods, and goes back to the other recliner, and presses the heels of her hands to her eyes because she doesn’t  _ care _ if Cady sees her exhausted and scared and fighting back tears right now. She’ll care later, maybe. 

“I tackled him,” Cady admits after they’ve sat without talking for Vic doesn’t know how long.

When Vic pulls her hands away from her eyes, the light hurts a little. “Good,” she says. “I hope he fell off a cliff.”

“He’s booked, along with the other two idiots he got to go along with it.” Cady shifts, the material of the jacket sliding against the weird not-really-plastic cushioning of the recliner. “Had a grudge against Dad for something from a few years ago, apparently just got out of jail last month. It was something stupid.”

Vic hums in response, closes her eyes against the light. She thinks she might be able to sleep, if she had a blanket and that last light would go out. “Still hope he falls off a cliff,” she says, a little belatedly.

When Cady replies, she sounds far away to Vic, drowned out by Walt’s steady, rhythmic breathing. “You win some, you lose some.” 

She might say something else, but Vic doesn’t hear it. She wakes up a few hours later in darkness, with a blanket covering her and a bag of clothes and DVDs against the wall.

_ One _

Of the two of them, Walt’s the better cook, in Vic’s opinion. She can follow a recipe, can throw quick things together, has a few semi-impressive tricks up her sleeve that she pulls out when she needs to. But she’s not Betty Crocker, that’s for sure.

One of her semi-impressive dishes, though, is a good old-fashioned spaghetti. The trick is the sauce, which is a Moretti family recipe that Vic brought with her all the way to Wyoming from (allegedly) her great-great-grandmother’s kitchen in Italy. The sauce cooks for at least four hours, fills the house up with the smell of fresh tomatoes and garlic. The great thing about living in Wyoming is that there’s a pretty steady supply of farm-fresh  _ everything _ , from the tomatoes in the sauce to the beef in the meatballs.

So when the sauce is done around seven, and the noodles are done around seven-thirty, Vic slips into the dress she bought two weeks ago, the one that had given her this idea in the first place. It’s kind of a burgundy color, a dark red that looks nearly black until the light hits it, the kind meant to be worn out to dinner and then left on a bedroom floor.

A date night in, just a little romance, because she and Walt tend to fall into the routine of work-family-sleep-repeat. It’s not a bad thing, and it’s not like this dinner is supposed to be special in anyway other than an evening just for them. 

Vic puts on the dress, a little makeup, wears her hair down instead of up even though it draws attention to the roots that are coming in a little more gray than they used to be. She sets the table, keeps the sauce on the stove and the noodles warm in the pot, and she waits as the clock ticks on. Ten ‘til eight.

Ten after.

Eight-thirty.

Nine.

Vic tries his cell phone, and gets no answer even though it rings through. It’s only an hour, but Walt said he’d be home at eight. If the phone is ringing through to voicemail, he’s in service, so why wouldn’t he answer? 

He said he’d be home at eight. He’d  _ promised _ he’d be home at eight, because he wanted to see Vic in her new dress, wanted to make her feel less like Deputy Victoria Moretti and more like Vic. 

Nine-thirty.

Vic turns off the stove and calls Cady, and then puts everything in Tupperware and stacks it in the fridge. She changes into her uniform and pulls her hair back into a ponytail, leaves the dress on the bed behind her as she goes.

_ Eight _

Vic’s watching  _ Gunsmoke _ again. This time it’s a movie, and it’s kind of a disappointment if she’s honest. Which is stupid, because she didn’t even like  _ Gunsmoke _ . Despite herself, she gets into it, wonders about the rest of the  _ Gunsmoke  _ seasons beyond the few that she watched out of order.

She’s picking at her nails again, at one little stubborn chip of red polish that she hasn’t been able to get off yet. The volume of the movie is low, and she’s got subtitles on so that she doesn’t have to turn it up or get her headphones off of the table nearby. 

“Is that  _ Return to Dodge _ ?”

Vic starts and nearly launches the laptop onto the floor. She turns her head to look at the bed, and finds Walt looking back, blinking like he always does when he’s most of the way toward waking up. The sound of the movie cuts off when Vic closes the laptop and moves it to the table in favor of dropping her head into her hands.

She’s so fucking relieved.

There’s the sound of Walt moving, and Vic jerks her head up again to glare at him. “Don’t you dare get up,” she says, hates that her voice is watery and thick. “If you even  _ think _ about getting out of that bed, I will handcuff you to the railing.”

Walt settles. “How long have I been here?”

“It’s day four,” Vic replies, rubs at her eyes again and tries to fight back tears. “Well, maybe day five now, I don’t know what fucking time it is. Henry found you, then you were in surgery, and then you got an infection. Cady got the guy that stabbed you, and the other two.”

Walt nods. He still looks tired, Vic thinks, but she might actually lose it if he goes back to sleep and doesn’t wake up for days again. “And you’ve been watching  _ Gunsmoke _ .”

“It’s all Ferg brought me,” Vic blows out in an explosive, annoyed sigh. “I also watched both versions of  _ 3:10 to Yuma _ ,  _ Lonesome Dove _ ,  _ The Magnificent Seven _ , and  _ A Million Ways to Die in the West _ , which was just stupid.”

“So you’ve been here all five days,” Walt says.

Vic feels like she’s missing something again, and she’s getting real fucking sick of it. “Of course I have, Walt,” she says, and knows that she sounds tired and scared and sad, even though he’s awake and talking to her. “Where else would I be? Henry left your hat with me, Cady told me that we couldn’t both be working while you were here so I needed to stay, so where the  _ holy fucking hell  _ else would you want me to be?”

There’s something in his expression that Vic sees every now and again, something soft and so overwhelming that she doesn’t know how to handle it. And they love each other, she  _ knows  _ they love each other, even if they don’t say it as often as they probably should, even if they show it in little ways instead of yelling it from the rooftops every chance that they get.

And it hits her, the  _ something _ that she’s missing here, about roses and Walt’s hat, about wanting and expectations, about where Vic belongs and the spaces that she’s carved out for herself. And there’s no ring on her finger, but there’s  _ intent _ , and Walt’s never made a promise to her that he wouldn’t walk through Hell itself to keep.

“Come here,” Walt says, scoots and fusses with the blankets and the oxygen line and the IV.

Vic’s going to lose her shit in this hospital room, she can feel it in the way her eyes sting and her throat tightens. “You were stabbed, Walt, I’m not going to climb into your hospital bed and hurt you.”

But she doesn’t hurt him when she settles onto the bed next to him, on top of the blankets. The stab wound is on the other shoulder anyway, so Vic curls up against him in the too-small space because Walt isn’t exactly a small man. She closes her eyes and rests her head on his chest, listens to his heartbeat through the hospital gown and relaxes into the feeling of his arm around her.

“I love you,” she says, because she doesn’t say it enough, and then, “You’re going to be an incredible grandfather when Cady and Zach get around to it,” followed by, “I saved the spaghetti,” and finally, “I’m not Miss Kitty, Walt.”

And Walt says, “I love you, too, Vic,” and, “We’ll let Cady and Zach worry about that,” and, “I’m sorry I missed dinner,” and, “I’m not Marshall Dillon.”

Vic’s body feels heavy, but she reaches for her phone anyway, shoots off a text to Cady to start getting it through the phone tree that Walt’s awake. She feels like she could sleep for a week, right here in a hospital bed with the machine hum and the oxygen hiss and the conversations too far away to really understand.

“I don’t want you to be anywhere else,” Walt says, soft in that way he gets right before they fall asleep at night. “I don’t want to wake up to anyone else ever again, Vic.”

And maybe Vic doesn’t think she belongs in Wyoming, but she thinks that maybe it’s not  _ Wyoming _ that really matters. She’s carved a space out for herself here, in this bed, in Walt’s house, in Walt’s life - roses and intentions and hats, all of it. 

And that’s good enough for her. 


End file.
